osTicket vs. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

osTicket is very well suited for small to medium environments where the budget might be tight or a complex system isn't desired. The basic pillars of osTicket being that it is simple, lightweight, reliable, open source, and best of all free really make osTicket a great alternative to higher-cost customer support systems. While osTicket does have shortfalls which would be bad for some environments—like not offering social media integration, lacking a flashy user interface, no detailed analytics (satisfaction, performance, etc.), no live chat/messaging, and any detailed customization requires PHP knowledge—osTicket is a great free and simple support system without the extra features and costs the alternatives offer.

Incentivized

Spiceworks Help Desk from the user end is very simple. Once you submit your technology needs, I automatically receive an email stating that my ticket was received and is being processed. It's also helpful to have the VNC feature so that my IT department can automatically VNC into my computer if it's a quick fix. At times Spiceworks Help Desk can be tricky because as someone who's not in a Tech role at my company, it can be hard to describe what I need assistance with writing.

Incentivized

• Web based, so available from any web browser
• Free - no cost to the organization to buy
• Runs on linux - solid, secure, free

Incentivized

• It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
• We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
• Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
• Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.

Incentivized

• osTicket's hosted version is expensive and customization is kind of hard to come by. So, unless you have programming-proficient developers on hand (we do!) you will need to accept the options that you are paying for.
• osTicket's community forum has had some bugs recently as they have rolled out a new platform for it. For people who rely on the community forum extensively, this is a set back. Again, this is more of an issue for those using open source and not the SaaS version.

Incentivized

• I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
• It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
• Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.

Incentivized

It does well what I was looking for on a ticketing tool

There is no contract to renew, since it's free. Spiceworks has helped me so much that I couldn't imagine trying to replace it with a different product. I'd have a hard time finding a single product that does everything that Spiceworks does, let alone one that does it as well as Spiceworks and for free

Incentivized

I am familiar with osTicket and this allow me to teach all the staff and support them whenever they have any concern regarding the usability and following processes.

1. Its free. 2. Its easy to install. 3. You can have it up and running in under 1-hour. 4. You get dashboards that are easy to read so you know the state of your network. 5. You can create your own reports and not just the ones already installed. 6. Excellent tool for network administrators and security practitioners. 7. Did I mention that its free?

Incentivized

We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.

Incentivized

Being open-source it is community supported. There is a hosted version that provides better support. Honestly, I have not really needed support

Incentivized

Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.

Incentivized

Grant all prerequisites are met, before installing to avoid any issue during the installation

If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth

Incentivized

This company wanted to first explore how a ticketing/support system could benefit their organization before investing [in] a solution. Firstly osTicket is open source and doesn't have a license fee and secondly, because of [its] simplicity, it is quick to implement in the organization. These were the key 2 drivers to choose osTicket. Of course, there are trial versions of the other products available but the implementation time needed is longer since their functionality suite is larger than what osTicket offers. Those extra features aren't needed (yet) so that is the third and final reason why osTicket was chosen and probably will stay until the need for more functionality arises.

Incentivized

EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.

Incentivized

• Works well as a centralized support system for the businesses IT.
• The support team can evaluate all tickets that come in and easily evaluate priority, details, etc.
• If the escalated development team can be limited to their assignments only allowing them to retain focus.

Incentivized

• Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
• Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
• Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
• Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.

Incentivized